Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Here are some photos of troops for my early WWI armies for the war of maneuvre. The 75 and crews are new this month whilst I have also been working on rebasing some of my Renegade infantry figures. Sadly Renegade have gone out of production and the figures are no longer available.

Monday, June 23, 2014

On Thursday I went to Hugh Wilson’s for our big game which
was a 1914 Bolt Action game.Colin Jack
came up with the scenario which was a French attack during the Battle of the
Frontiers.Colin, Dave O’Brien and I
supplied the figures whilst Hugh Wilson provided all the terrain.

My French force prepares to attack the factory - Renegade figures

The French objective was to capture 5 objectives spread
across the table.We had five players on
both sides.The German defenders each
commanded 3 squads and a MG.The French
players each had 5 infantry squads and a MG.In addition the French had the support of a battery of 3 75mm guns and both sides had
2 cavalry regiments in reserve of table.

The French artillery acted like a death ray at first but was
then hit by an off table bombardment which effected them for several
moves.The aggressive French attack at the northern
end of the table went well but at my southern end my force was cut to pieces by
the German defenders losing 80% of my infantry.

French artillery under off-table fire - Great War Miniatures

By the end of the game the French had taken 3 of the
objectives.We decided the game was a
French victory. It proved to be a very enjoyable game.We
need to look at improving the rules for WWI especially the rules for cavalry.

Friday, June 13, 2014

I have continued to work away on my Napoleonic
collection.I bought some very nicely painted
Russian staff figures on Ebay and this has allowed me to complete 2 more
multi-figure command vignettes.They comprise
7 of the 8 figure Perry Russian command set minus the British representative
General Wilson.I use 60mm circular 3mm
MDF bases from Warbases with Silfor tufts and Javis static grass.

Kutuzov, Kutaisov and Col Toll

Barclay de Tolly, Uvarov, Ermolov and Osterman Tolstoy (in the cape)

I sold my previous Bavarian Napoleonic Army and have
replaced them with a single 4 battalion Black Powder Brigade of 3 line
battalions and a light battalion.I have
also added 2 battalions of Berg infantry to my French/Allied army.I bought the figures ready painted from South
Africa and I added some more shading, rebased them and added flags from Warflags.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

On Thursday I went to Hugh Wilson’s for our big game which
was originally going to be an AWI M&T game as a follow up to our FIW
game.Having looked at the figures in our
AWI collections I decided that they are to formally based for M&T and the
terrain setup so we played a slightly
revised FIW game.

French allied Indians attack a storehouse

Hugh had revised the terrain reducing the amount of river
and adding some more settlements and replaced the log fort with a Vauban
fort.The figures came from the
collections of Angus Konstam and Colin Jack neither of whom were present.Hugh supplied all the terrain except for the
indian village and the Vauban fort which Colin Jack and I supplied. The table is 15ft long and 6ft wide.

The French objective was to destroy the settlements, fortress,
and once again generally instil terror into their enemy.The British were all deployed on the table
and the French entered from the north side.The British players concentrated the rangers on their right flank, with
3 companies of militia holding the fort.Their Indians, regulars and the other militia were scattered along their
front.

Highlanders defending a settlement - sadly later suffered heavy casualties fording the river

On their left the French regulars under Ray and the Irregulars
under Tim both supported by 3 bands of Indians engaged the Rangers under Dave
and some of Campbell’s Indians supportedeventually by a firing line of Elite British
Grenadiers under Hugh who formed up on the open ground in front of the
fortress.In the British centre it
seemed mainly to be a battle of indian versus indian in svage close combats between
Bart, Hugh and Campbell.Bart and Hugh both had an Indian chief killed
in hand to hand combat.Whenever
Campbell’s militia got into action they were quickly swept away by Bart’s
indian warriors.

Rangers engage the French from their cliff top eyrie

By the end of the game the French had lost 1 less unit than
the British and also destroyed 4 settlements so we declared the game a French
victory again. As before it proved to be
a very enjoyable game.